


A Starship Is No Place To Be Alone

by NTA



Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: Voyager
Genre: Angst, Happy Halloween guys, Psychological Horror, STHHB, So..., This is a horror fic, also much like later Voyager seasons there is a whole lot of Seven in here, and gays, and have fun, but not in a catsuit bc my name is not Rick Berman and I actually respect women, just in case you didn't realize, so strap in for the longest fic I've ever written
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-29
Updated: 2020-10-29
Packaged: 2021-03-08 22:56:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,482
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27264610
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NTA/pseuds/NTA
Summary: She woke up. Waking up is cold, bone-chilling. It always was. It’s why she avoided falling asleep in the first place. She breathed in, she breathed out. Stopping her breathing, she strained to hear… anything. Her loud inhale was the only sound to cut the silence. No footsteps, no hushed conversations, not even a humming engine core.Seven wakes up to darkness. All alone with no clear memories of where she is or how she got there, she can only rely on herself to find out what happened to her and her crew.And she can rely on herself, right?
Comments: 7
Kudos: 7
Collections: Star Trek Halloween Horror Bang 2020





	A Starship Is No Place To Be Alone

She woke up. Waking up is cold, bone-chilling. It always was. It’s why she avoided falling asleep in the first place. She breathed in, she breathed out. Stopping her breathing, she strained to hear… anything. Her loud inhale was the only sound to cut the silence. No footsteps, no hushed conversations, not even a humming engine core. 

Panic rose, blocking her thoughts, she didn’t remember falling asleep, she couldn’t even remember where she had last been. The only clear thing was her panic and the events she associated with it. Her forceful separation from the Collective. Panic and absolute silence had always remained the biggest triggers for those memories. After being separated she had slowly learned that - even though she was the only one in her head - she wasn’t alone. As well as that absolute silence was an unachievable state for any ship. 

Or so she had thought.

She stopped breathing again to try and hear anything, please anything. The seconds ticked by without a sound and soon her not-breathing had turned into panic gasps.

Where had she ended up? And wherever she was, was she there alone?

Bile was rising up her throat. Out of instinct, she balled up her hands into fists, hard enough to leave marks. 

The pain - enough of a distraction to make some room for clear thought - grounded her and she thought of Tuvok and their sessions together. Expand the stomach by taking a deep breath, he had told her at the beginning of each of them. There was no way to determine what helped more - Tuvok’s voice or her conscious breathing. But the panic ebbed aside.

With that, she made an effort to unsqueeze her eyes. A controlled breath was followed by a careful lift of her eyelids.

Nothing. She closed them again. Opened them. Still. Closed, open, closed and then open again. 

She yanked up both of her arms to put in front of her face, but only her left one complied.

The right one was abruptly ripped back down, accompanied by a sting that burned through her whole arm.

Not that she was even able to make out her left one that should be just mere centimeters away from her face. 

A forceful exhale cemented its position in her mental map, but visual confirmation was impossible.

After craning her neck she confirmed that there was no interruption of this darkness.

She laid with this terrifying fact for a second before forcefully turning her attention to her right arm. The debate of whether or not there was in fact no light or if she had been rendered unable to differentiate between darkness and light was not for this moment.

Her injured arm took priority.

She switched tasks to trace her way to the source of pain, her free hand shaking minutely as she felt along her skin. The fabric of whatever she was wearing stopped just short of the middle of her upper arm. She couldn’t be sure but the length and texture suggested it to be a patient’s robe.

Her hands traveled down further until they reached...something that was embedded in her elbow mould. 

Small and had caused pain when it had been moved, she summarised the few facts she knew about the thing. A needle?

Taking another stomach-expanding breath, she mentally prepared herself before grabbing it by its small shaft and extracting it.

The pain was short and the tip of what had been buried inside of her arm was sharp and wet. Being unable to tell what exactly she had been injected with made her very uneasy.

If she was honest with herself, not knowing anything about her current situation made her very uneasy. Was this Voyager? It felt like a biobed, just like the patient’s robes she was wearing felt like Voyager’s, but this was all easily imitated. Especially since there was no light here. Or was there and she was just unable to process it? What purpose would a lightless room even serve? Why had she been asleep and why had she so suddenly woken up, with no one here to have caused it? Was she alone? What had happened to her crew? How long…

Priorities. She needed to prioritize her questions. Anything else really than laying here.

This was a time for logical, analytical reasoning.

First priority. Status? Mentally she felt fuzzy and disoriented. Probably due to lack of regeneration in favor of sleeping: functional but not running at top efficiency. 

Physical evaluation: toes fine albeit cold. Legs stiff but functional. Her arms were maneuverable but as stiff as the rest of her. Cold. It was very cold here. The robe barely provided any warmth. Lifting up her arm she sniffed. Sense of smell was functional at least. Her tongue felt a bit too thick but was in working condition to sense how disgusting her mouth tasted. How long had her teeth gone without care?

As she slid her tongue over the coat that laid over her teeth she was hit with an idea. She almost couldn’t believe she hadn’t thought of it earlier already.

"Computer."

The signature beep of the internal AI wasn't to be heard. So much for that. 

Either she wasn't on Voyager, or the ship was completely drained of power.

A shiver went through her entire body. She needed to move, to try and get some warmth back.

Sitting up caused minor trouble to her inner balance but she breathed through it as she swayed, nails digging into the hard, cold surface she had been laying on. Next question to be solved: where was she and was she in any immediate danger? 

There were no signs of guards, but there was always the possibility of being surrounded by an energy shield that could, even by normal light, be undetectable. Swinging both legs over the right side of the still uncategorized surface, she could feel the ground under her. Height and general layout both indicated it to be a biobed. One indicator that she may very well still be on Voyager. 

Crossing the small difference between herself and the ground she found herself on shaky legs, having to keep one hand on the possible biobed to ensure her upright position. It must have been a while since she had last relied on them to take her from one place to another. Very unnerving and inconvenient. If she was actually in Voyager's sickbay, she should try to find the Doctor's office. He may very well know what happened to her. And possibly have something else to wear other than the cold surgery outfit she was wearing. If there were no other patients she had most likely been occupying the bed directly opposite to the door. This meant that she only needed to walk a few steps to be able to reach the Doctor’s door. Steadying herself, she let go of the biobed and walked forward on unsure feet, taking small, shuffling steps. This wasn't like her, but she was determined. Unstoppable. Or a “fucking pain in the ass" as the chief engineer once put it.

"My fear is irrelevant," she breathed out, letting it hang in the room. “My discomfort is irrelevant." It felt good to puncture the darkness like this. It felt like a retaking of control. 

She stretched out her arms in front of her and took one measured step, now able to feel something solid to her right. The surface was curved, seeming to go on for no end. She mentally added another 10% to the probability of this being Voyager's sickbay. Either that or she was on another ship with a Federation design. It was not a very likely scenario in the Delta Quadrant, but stranger things had happened. Letting her right hand guide her along the wall, she led herself into the Doctor's office. Projecting the office’s layout in her mind, she was convinced she was standing to the side of the desk and layed a mental 3-part grid over it.

If the ship’s power was drained the doctor’s most likely course would have been to retreat into his mobile emitter. Which in all likelihood rested on the table, but searching the room methodically felt… more organized. More in control.

Still, as she turned slightly to glide her fingers over the table there was fearful tension in her. So far her search had produced no results. But her fingers glided uninterrupted over the smooth table. 

At least without light, she did not have to see the tremor going through her hands.

“There is no mobile emitter”, she started. She uncomfortably noted that her voice was lacking its usual strength. 

“A reasonable hypothesis is that the Doctor is wearing it.” 

The hypothesis was reasonable, but it didn’t account for why the doctor would ever abandon a patient. And if she hadn’t been his patient then why was she wearing a patient gown? “Further intel is to be gathered,” she stated aloud. As unnecessary as it felt to say things aloud when they were only for her, it held a sense of familiarity.

“Next priority: gather more data on what happened.” 

First location? Sickbay. Questions: Was she the only patient? Were there any clues to the doctor’s whereabouts? As she continued on, rounding the table, her toes stubbed on something. The pain was noticeable but of dismissable magnitude. Retrieving the item from the floor, she found it to be of laptop size. It most likely belonged to the Doctor and, if still intact, could potentially offer valuable information.

Upon pressing the power button, she could feel haptic feedback before the screen lit up.

The screen lit up. She was able to process light! A painful knot of tension loosened in her and she exhaled deeply without having to force herself.

The lit-up screen showed the Doctor in front of an undefinable dark background. His clothes were darker than usual and she had to strain to separate him from his surroundings.

“Uhm, hi Seven.” The doctor on the screen started saying before interrupting himself to clear his throat. “You probably do not remember this but on your last away mission... You know our negotiations about dilithium with the - well their names don’t matter I suppose. Anyway, things went south. Your ocular implant was damaged and I had to operate on it. After you woke up, you seemed fine but as time...”. 

The virtual doctor didn’t get to finish his sentence as the screen cut out. She was left in darkness once again. The anger, her anger, took Seven by surprise. It felt hot and cold at the same time. It also felt like the first time she had a clue about what was going on. With a scream, she took it with both hands and threw it against the nearby wall. The crash filled the silence like a bomb. After her throw she could hear the blood pounding in her ears again, albeit for an entirely different reason than it did after she had woken up.

Fists clenched tightly enough to leave red marks on her palms, she found herself cursing the Federation’s faulty craftsmanship.

Closing her eyes, she felt herself reminded of Tuvok’s lessons the captain had made her attend to manage her and B’Elanna’s relationship despite her vocal insistence that she didn’t need them. If she concentrated, she could conjure up Tuvok’s image within the darkened room. The way his hands were folded against each other, with both index fingers aligning and showing upwards. How he had made her describe the incident that had almost caused a physical fight and walked her through how she should have avoided escalating the incident by taking a step back.

Like then, she now took a deep, stomach-expanding breath. Logic and composure over everything was the only thing that would keep her living to find out what had happened, not impulsively destroying something that might have given her more information. Now that her head was clear, she checked in with her nanobots who immediately showed her that she was functioning within normal parameters. Whatever the doctor might have meant with possible side effects of his treatment was unclear. He might have simply made a mistake in his diagnosis. He had, after all, not been programmed for treating Borg/Human Hybrids.

She was in a working condition that was good enough for now. There was no indication as to what she was going to be faced with. What she would have to do to be reunited with the crew. Or at least to find out what had happened to them. The Kazon? Had they entered Vivian space again? Facts, she reminded herself. No speculating about what could be. Time was a luxury she couldn’t afford to waste. The facts were as following:

Something had supposedly damaged her ocular implant and caused long-term symptoms of an unknown kind. At least that was the Doctor’s opinion of her condition, she herself felt fine and for all she knew, her implant was working just fine. The now absolutely ruined laptop had only been found by mere coincidence and it was absolutely unacceptable to have to keep relying on such coincidences. 

For further intel-gathering she had to find a way to lighten up her environment. A flashlight would both be a handy-sized tool and one with a relatively long lifespan. Main engineering was likely to have one, or at least enable her to turn on power again to replicate one. If there was power there was a chance she could reinstate the computer. Even if the power was too low to keep it activated, she was likely to get more relevant data from it than she would get from just turning on the lights.

“Next location: Main engineering,” she stated just for herself.

\----

The doors had proven to also be affected by the power outage, and prying them open set her back by two minutes and thirty-three seconds. An unacceptably long time caused by her less-than-optimal musculature compared to what she normally maintained.

There was no light in the hallway. It was likely the whole ship was affected by whatever had happened. Closing her eyes she conjured up Voyager’s layout and started striding as powerfully as her still-weak legs allowed.

\---

Smooth uninterrupted metal was blocking her way to engineering. 

Contrary to the doors guarding sickbay, here was no small gap in between them. 

After ten minutes of fruitless trying, she had to admit to herself that this missing gap was more than a time-costly inconvenience.

She gave into her human weakness and sank to the ground. 

There she held her right hand, not needing to see to feel the warm blood that was making its way down her arm. Both of her legs were shaking more than they had ever before.

Sitting there she devoted her energy to calming down her rapid breathing. 

Having achieved that, she turned to analyzing her situation.

Having confirmed that the turbolifts, like everything else, were without power - she had decided to try the Jefferies tubes. Which had served her well until she had made it to the final tube that was connecting the system to Engineering. It had been blocked by something sharp and very cold that had - as far as she could tell - blocked the whole tube. 

She had built her new approach to getting into Engineering on the assumption that the doors here had a similarly sized opening comparable to their counterparts before sickbay. 

A faulty assumption that had nearly cost her her arm, when she had tried to create an opening of her own. The “opening” had forcefully closed after a mere 1.5 seconds. The injury wasn’t permanent she hoped, but the pain was making her feel dizzy.

“Pain is irrelevant,” she reminded herself, the words echoing in the hallway. The silence was only broken by her still slightly uneven breaths and the occasional drop of blood hitting the floor.

After three deep in- and then exhales she decided to extend her unplanned break by at least another three minutes. The pain that radiated from her right hand was… excruciating and in an effort to escape it she allowed her thoughts to wander.

The last time she had been this alone had been when they had put the whole crew in stasis. She had started seeing ghosts, voices where there had been nothing. The doctor had given her medication against it but she had stopped taking it after a day. It had dulled her senses too much to have been of use to her crew who relied on her.

Her situation then and now had certain parallels: the feeling of loneliness after having been accustomed to a whole crew living around her, bouts of irrationality on her part, being exposed to complete darkness.

At least that darkness had been kept at bay, never finding its way onto the ship. This one had. 

  
  


But the more she thought about it, the more unsettling this one revealed itself to be.

Back then, if she had felt the need to see the face of somebody else all she had to do was go into the shuttle bays and watch them as they laid in their stasis. As much of a nuisance the doctor had been, he had still been company. Now she didn’t even know where they were. Or if they were still alive.

The corpses could be behind that door - piling up - or laying on parts of this corridor she hadn’t walked on yet. There were no outside stimuli to prevent her mind from conjuring up a frighteningly clear picture of her sitting in dried blood, corpses decorating the hallway in front of her.

  
  


She barely fought down the impulse of searching the whole hallway on all fours. Repeating to herself that it was a pointless waste of energy in her already frail physical state. 

“Expand your stomach and then let it all out.” Tuvok’s voice’s calming effect was diminished by the fact that she was remembering and not living it. But it was a welcome change from the horrifying scenarios she had been envisioning.

In the silence, she felt like she could almost hear the nanobots trying to repair her broken skin. They felt… off. For a lack of a better word. They felt slow and less focused as if they were unsure how to deal with her injury. If she were in a philosophical way then she would say that the nanobots were acting as exhausted as she felt. How long hadn’t she been able to regenerate? Was this why they were so inefficient? Or was it something she had been injected with?

What would she do if she couldn’t get the doors open? How would she find out what had happened if she couldn’t see a thing?

No power, no light. While it wouldn’t influence navigation, as she had demonstrated considerable expertise in maneuvering in the dark ship, it would make gathering more intel almost impossible. She would have to hope for another “lucky” coincidence, like the one that had led her to the doctor’s note.

The odds of a repetition of those circumstances were extremely low. Far too low to be acceptable.

“Failure is unacceptable,” she concluded.

Standing up took mental effort the likes she would think could compare to the anxiety crew personnel expressed when they described having to get out of bed after a too short night. If this feeling was indeed comparable then she was grateful for only needing regeneration.

Like before, she placed her hands within the slight gap between the door panels and exerted her muscles. The door didn’t move a millimeter, but the pain in her injured fingers multiplied as she tried to apply pressure.

If the Half Klingon head engineer were here, she would surely have several fitting curses for the door, but all Seven had was the same hot anger she had felt during the cross of the Void.

She of course couldn’t say for sure what was behind that door, but the probability of finding something that could be useful to her couldn’t be ignored. 

Maybe there was even somebody trapped behind it and she couldn’t help them.

She used to be so strong, so much stronger than most people and now her nanoprobes were failing to close simple cuts on her fingertips.

She had failed, just like she had in the Void.

“Seven of Nine isn’t effective outside of a collective,” she stated. Even her voice was shaking now.

Her palms were still pressed against the door, against which they were shaking.

She could picture how she looked leaning on the door for support so her legs wouldn’t give out. Having to lean on her failure. It was too much and she could feel the reality of her situation settling in. In her current situation the odds of successfully opening the door were close to zero.

That fucking door.

“Why won’t you open?”, she screamed at it. Feeling something like pride when she noticed that her voice had some of its usual vigor behind it.

She gave it a kick for good measure before drumming on it.

“You stupid garbage piece of Federation Tech!” Another kick.

“Why can’t I open you, huh!”

And before she could help herself or think of anything Tuvok had ever said that might help her, she felt tears springing to her eyes. Gliding down the wall, she found herself back on the ground, tears streaming down her eyes.

“Why can’t I open you,” she whispered.

“What made me this useless?”

And she sat. And for the first time in decades, she actually cried. And she cried for herself and everybody she couldn’t help because she wasn’t enough.

\----------

Waking up is cold, it’s unnatural. Sleeping was ineffective.

Status: Extremities: stiff (arms, neck), asleep (legs)

Sleeping hadn’t been supposed to happen until she was absolutely exhausted for its inherent danger of being in a defenseless state. Just because she had been alone so far, didn’t guarantee that she actually was. 

To add on to that, her internal timer was now confused. Before her breakdown she had been awake in the dark for an estimated two hours. Now? Indecisive. Her nanoprobes had managed to stop the bleeding, but the pain radiating from the wound was still very palatable.

She did suppose that she had the wound to thank for waking her up. Sleeping for a longer stretch of time in this cold could have proved fatal. 

She willed herself to get up on her feet once again, feeling even shakier now that there was no feeling in them. She concentrated on the pain that was coming from the fingers of her right arm, to distract herself from the panic she felt over her more than desolate constitution.

“Next priority:...”, the pause stretched.

Her situation hadn’t changed. Or more precisely her options hadn’t changed. Returning to sickbay to traipse around in the darkness was still unacceptable. Opening the door had already proven to be an impossible alternative. 

There was nothing for her here and neither could she remain here forever.

“Next priority: Up… I guess.” Her voice was hoarse.

Knowing nothing about what she had been given during her sleep, possibly even coma, there was no reliable way of deducing how much time she had left before her (human) body shut down, and that was... unnerving.

She had wasted a lot of time and more importantly energy on her meltdown, time that could very well end up making the difference between staying alive or dying.

Staying alive or dying!

Seven felt the same anger associated with Lt. Torres during their arguments but this time directed inwards.

She had been so occupied with trying to figure out what had happened to her and everybody else that she had failed to look at the facts.

The ship really was experiencing system-wide power failures then there would be no oxygen left for her to breathe.

Which only left 4 scenarios.

One, the ship had been powered down so extremely that life support was the only thing left.

Two, somebody had disabled every system and was managing life support manually or externally.

Three, the ship was being supplied with oxygen from an outside source. 

Or four, she was on borrowed oxygen.

“Next priority: find oxygen source.” Her voice was still hoarse and her throat still hurt but she had something else to focus on now.

Focusing on herself, she filtered out any concerns she had for the state of her sanity, state of her borg technology and nightmarish images of being surrounded by her dead fa... crewmembers, and conjured up Voyager’s blueprint. The next vent was only down the hall to her right.

The hand she splayed over the rills of the ventilation system was as shaky as her legs and she steadied it on them.

“Nothing.” Facts had to be accepted even if they weren’t contained within the wished-for parameters.

Which meant there was an outside supplier of oxygen, either another ship that had them contained or the Voyager was... open in some way that allowed for outside oxygen to circulate.

“Was the Voyager landed?” 

Lt. Paris had once taken to (unpromptedly) telling her of the time Janeway had commanded him to land the ship and the ensuing anxiety he had felt during Voyager’s very first landing. An emergency landing for any ship was a desperate move, not to mention the high toll it took on their constantly low energy reserve.

The ship having been forced to land seemed like the most obvious conclusion since another ship supplying them with oxygen but trying no contact seemed slim. But if the ship was in fact being oxygen-supplied by nature, then the shuttle doors were most likely open to allow for easy circulation. But what if the crew was still on the ship?

Seven felt a headache coming on and allowed herself the irrelevant luxury of slumping towards the ground.

Cradling her head with hands, she sighed.

“This is a pointless exercise in what ifs!”

  
  


As she combed through her hair with metallic tips she realized another thing she should have noticed much sooner. Her hair was short.

  
  


Her inner calculator was still embarrassingly inaccurate but it couldn’t be longer than a few millimeters.

Now both her hands were running through what was left of her hair.

“What happened to me?” she whispered. Even if there had been something else to fixate on she wouldn’t have been able to.

“Who did this?”, she said but only for herself and the echoing hallway and nobody saw the tear that made its way down her face.

She jumped up, furiously rubbing it away and surely leaving red marks on her face. “My hair is irrelevant,” she stated to the hallway. “My discomfort is irrelevant,” she added after a moment. “My inabilities...”, she bit down hard on her lips to ward off the tears she felt waiting for her. “My inabilities are irrelevant.”

The hallway failed to disagree and she leaned heavily on its side.

She had to tune out her past and worryingly recent failures or she would end up dying in this darkness.

“Seven of Nine of Unimatrix zero one, start thinking! Ship status: powered down. Crew status: unknown. You need information, where could you find it? Come on, come on, think!”

That last thought could have been Lt. Torres and in the darkness she could almost picture her standing in front of her, urging her to be the best version of herself. 

“No computer, no information,” she stated more slowly and now it felt like Tuvok was standing in front of her. 

“There is one place that most likely contains the information you are looking for.” “Where Tuvok, where?” She screamed, banging on the hallway walls like she had seen Naomi Wildman do. 

“Where?”

“The captain’s personal quarters of course. She insists on using the archaic method of a paper diary to record her thoughts as she ‘does not believe the computer’s personal log conveys her emotions accurately.”

Seven felt herself slumping to the floor once more, exhausted by her shouting match with herself.

“I am not well,” she confessed to the ground she was sitting on.

Now that she thought about it she did have a vague memory of the captain mentioning such a thing as a recommendation for her to start her own and ‘collect her thoughts’. It had sounded like a waste of much needed energy on a frivolous thing but the captain had waved it off. “Not everything you don’t need to survive for is a luxury, Seven,” she had said. She hadn’t agreed then but now it seemed like what chocolate ice cream was for Naomi Wildman.

“I need to leave you now”, she told the floor. “I have an... appointment.” She allowed herself a minute to mourn the absence of everybody who would have appreciated her clever use of humor to defuse a tense moment and then heaved herself to her feet.

________

Exit: less than graceful despite intense training, she fell out more than anything.

She vowed to herself to not tell that detail should she ever be inquired about it.

The room was marginally warmer than the Jefferies tubes. A sign that it had been closed since the heating had gone out.

“Priority ‘Gain access into Captain’s personal quarters’ is a success. Next one: Find personal analog log.

Whether it was the uptick in heat or the fact that finally something went according to plan, Seven felt less exhausted than she had had earlier.

She stood up slowly, making sure to stretch all her limbs. She had had to take frequent pauses in her “travelling”. When the constant crouching had become too much, she had just sat on the ground to try and alleviate the strain on them. Jefferies Tubes had been made for people smaller than her like Lt. Torres. 

An observation the woman wouldn’t welcome as extensive polling had told her, statements containing Lt. Torres' height had a high probability of infuriating the woman no matter the statement’s nature. 

She stretched again, balancing on her tip-toes, appreciating the wonderful feeling of not being confined and for a moment even tuned out the still harsh pain coming from her injured fingers. Turning on her own axis she halted. 

For a moment…

She had been keeping her eyes closed to avoid the disorienting disconnect between open eyes and not being able to see, but just then, it had been as if...

She opened them. And _saw_ the room around her. Not just from her eidetic memory but in actual detail. The light that filtered through the room bathed it in an unnatural yellow/grey mix that didn’t illuminate anything particularly, but for the first time since she had seen the doctor on a laptop, her eyes were of use to her again.

“Halting priority”, she told the grey room. Voice heavy with emotions. 

She stepped closer to the window - in the hopes of finding a clue that would validate a hypothesis or even one that would mandate a new one. But whatever was outside remained unrecognizable.

Outside was the same yellow grey mix she could observe in here. Completely impenetrable. Not even her ocular implant could tell her anything about what was going to be waiting for her once she’d stepped outside.

“No new intel was gathered,” she stated but put her uninjured hand against the glass nonetheless.

Inhaling deeply she turned around.

“Resuming main priority.”

Mirroring her actions from sickbay she started a thorough search of any available surfaces while making sure to lift her feet as little as possible to search the ground and general room in a parallel fashion.

Despite regaining her sense of sight she felt it still necessary, especially since the light became fainter the further away she was from the window.

A logical but ultimately useless approach she realized when she found something diary-like in the nightstand. A place she had given a ninety percent chance of containing it.

Only a tricorder could have told her exactly what the pages were made of but they felt identical to the ones the doctor had made her sing off with him.

She was surprised at the complete lack of binding but it was also only a page.

When the captain had told her about it, she had thought it to be something that she was doing in her spare time with an not to be underestimated amount of effort put into it.

This felt more akin to a note than an examination of thoughts and feelings.

She held it carefully as she made her way over to the window to better make out the words.

**Dear** ~~**whoever finds this** ~~ **Reader,**

**I don’t know anything about you or your culture so let me tell you about me and who we were.**

**I am Kathryn Janeway, Captain of the Starship Voyager. We came - from what my people called – the Alpha Quadrant and were part of a peaceful union of many different species and planets. An accident stranded us into this sector of space 5 years ago and we have been trying to** ~~ **find**~~ **return ever since. Recently a** ~~ **catastrophic**~~ **failed diplomatic mission to procure fuel forced us into emptying our already depleted resources and left one of our crewmates** ** ~~a danger~~ ~~in~~** ~~**danger**~~ **injured.** ~~ **Sadly**~~ **Despite our best efforts we were not able to heal her completely and she has been** ~~ **erratic**~~ ****~~**unpredictable**~~ **undergoing rapidly changing states of minds that can be of danger to** **innocent** **unknowing bystanders.**

 **We were forced into landing our ship on this planet.** ~~**that resembles our own home planet.** ~~

**We have devised a** ~~**course** **manual** **test**~~ **course to** **~~hopefully~~ ** **help our crewmate.**

 **I** **urge** **you not to interrupt this as it could have ~~unforeseen~~ ~~catastrophic~~ ~~unpleasant~~ unforeseen consequences for you.**

**If you find this, it might be the only record that still exists of me and my crew.**

**If so, I thank you for reading this.**

**Kathryn Janeway, first and last captain of the USS Voyager and its crew: signing off.**

The light allowed her to actually see how white her knuckles were. But the only thing that had her attention were the words Janeway had written about her. “Erratic”, “unpredictable”, “dangerous”. She thought back on how she had destroyed the laptop, broke down outside of engineering, her shouting match with no one but herself. Unconsciously she stroked over her buzzed head. Had she done this to herself? Was there nothing outside of here? Had she not been left behind but locked away? Had she... had she hurt them?

The paper fell out of her hand at this. Bile rose in her throat but nothing came out.

The ground hit her hard or maybe she hit it hard as she dropped to it. Hands on both sides of her head, trying to remember anything.

There was only a vague sense of discomfort and then excruciating pain. Pain. Darkness. Concerned faces and awkward sentiments that lacked sense and answers she couldn’t procur.

Still crouching, she swayed back and forth on her tip-toes. Like she had seen Naomi Wildman do. Trying to attach meaning to the snapshots she could remember.

There was nothing, just the sharp memory of pain she couldn’t relive but coiled away from regardless. The course that Captain Janeway hadn’t even been sure of, had never even started. She was still malfunctioning. She was potentially dangerous (“catastrophic consequences if course is not allowed to complete”).

“Dangerous”, she whispered. “Erratic”, she added. Tears were flowing again. “Unpredicatable.” “A danger.”

“Priority unclear.” she whispered.

She allowed herself to grieve for herself, before wiping away her tears. The risk of falling asleep again was too big to keep on crying.

Blinking her eyes free, she immediately noticed a distinct lack of light. The room was now being dominated by the grey in the mix. 

  
  


She jumped to her feet, momentarily forgetting about her aching knees. The view outside was even more nondescript than before. Offering nothing but a vast nothingness.

Panic rose inside of her, like the one she remembered. A panic she was painfully familiar with now.

All at once she registered that she was alone, on a spaceship, and soon she was going to be completely in the dark again.

Unacceptable.

There was nothing she could do about the light but the rest of her crew was outside.

She had to find them. Even one more second in the dark seemed too much and she scrambled towards the Jefferies tube.

Whatever she had to do to prove that she wasn’t a danger she would do. Whatever she had to do to make them feel safe, she would do. No matter what, as long as she wasn’t alone again.

\----------

The first foot she sat outside immediately made her shiver.

She had counted herself lucky (a phrase Lt. Paris hat taught her) when the very first shuttlebay had been open but now she was feeling strong regret she hadn’t taken the time to find other clothes. The patient robes were even less adequate out here than they had been inside.

The light was only marginally brighter than it had been inside Voyager. The grey had become more prominent than it had been inside the captain’s personal room.

There were no clues as to where the Voyager group could have gone and Seven decided to choose the most straightforward option. There were no visible interruptions of the flat expanse in front of her and so it was likely the crew had chosen the same directions as her. At least that was what she hoped.

“Main priority: Find crew.” 

After having stumbled and hit the ground for the first time she started mumbling to herself: “Main priority: Find crew.” Over and over again. She was going to find them, she had to find them. There was no other choice. “Main priority: Find…”

Something was shaking her. Her eyes flew upon to see that she was mere centimeters away from something grotesque.

She shoved at what she assumed was its face and rolled away. The thing didn’T even stumble. It was bipedal and had two arms but where its face should be was just a grey mass, with one razor-sharp line interrupting the smoothness. No ears, no mouth. 

Adrenalin powered up her exhausted system.

“Go away!” she screamed. Channeling her frustration into energy, she jumped to her feet to get away. She didn’t have enough energy to fight something like this. Just before she turned around she recognized a mistake in her earlier assessment. That wasn't a line in its face. 

It was a mouth. 

And now that it was open she could see a whole set of the sharpest looking teeth she had ever seen.

Without looking she turned and bumped into something solid that knocked the wind out of her. She fell on the ground and before she could react her face was pushed into the ground and something heavy came to set on her back. 

She prepared her energy to flip it off, when she felt a sharp pain in the back of her neck.

\----

  
  


“She’s not ready.”

“She’s worse than we left her.”

“She was dying.”

“Thankfully or we would have been injured or worse.” 

“Lt. Paris…”

“Don’t Lt. Paris me. It’s not your wife who was assimilated by her!”

Somebody sighed and two pairs of footsteps retreated.

The words came and went, leaving no meaning behind in her foggy brain but she recognised the voices. Chakotay and Lt. Paris. They had found her. She wasn’t alone anymore. And with that she let herself fall back into sleep.

\----------------

Waking up felt like she was stuck in a turbolift that was slowly making its way up through all the decks.

And her head hurt, something was pounding in it like she had tried real alcohol from the storage again. 

She went to rub her eyes but only her right hand complied. The left one was immediately ripped back, sending something clattering with it. 

Slowly she sifted through her memories. Waking up in sickbay, her journey through the ship, the note, her venture outside of Voyager. The Things.

Still she felt a deep joy. She wasn’t alone anymore. She had found the crew.

Opening her eyes made almost no difference. Everything was a dark grey around her. Again.

She opened her mouth to make herself be known but the only thing to come out was a prolonged coughing fit.

“She’s awake! Captain she’s awake!”

That sounded like the doctor but not only was he outside of her somewhat restricted field of view but his voice also lacked… something.

The doctor, Lt. Paris, Chakotay. They must have rescued her.

But why had they chained her up? As a precaution?

“Seven, can you hear me?” The Captain. 

Seven felt like crying, only of joy this time. Wanted to scream out, yes. But she only kept coughing.

“Doctor, give her something! We can’t talk to her like this.”

There was a pause then. With the way she was laying, her field of view was limited to what was exactly above her. 

“Do it, that’s an order.”

“Against my medical advice.”

“I don’t care.”

Something cold hit her neck and she started shivering again. But her cough subsided.

Someone sat down next to her, she could feel it in the way the air shifted.

“Seven, can you hear me?”

“Yes, Captain.” Her voice was rough and dry but it wasn’t a cough.

“How are you?”

“I am malfunctioning.”

“Can you tell me how bad it is?”

“You, yourself described me as a danger.”

“You read that, huh?”. Janeway sighed. “That’s a first.” This was added much more quietly, as if it only were for herself. 

“I was working on how best to warn off somebody from exploring the ship. It was never meant for you. I am sorry. Should have recycled it, when we still had power.” 

Seven nodded. It felt like the only thing she could add to that.

“What is happening to me?”, she asked after the pause stretched for an unacceptably long time.

Janeway laughed a short, dry laugh which launched itself into a coughing fit.

“If I knew that, I would have a lot less problems.” she stated after recovering.

The conversation between Lt. Paris and Chakotay she had overheard came back into her consciousness. They had been arguing over someone. Over her.

“Did I hurt anybody?” Not only her dry throat made it difficult to breathe out this sentence.

The Captain’s pause was the worst sound she had ever heard.

“You didn’t kill anyone.” she said, finally. Her voice had an edge to it.

“But I hurt someone.” she stated. Waiting for the Captain to volunteer more details.

“Not just one person.” Janeway tried to mask it, but there was anger in her voice.

“Why would I do that?”, she asked.

“Seven, open your eyes.”

“I fail to see the relevance.”

“Seven, just do it. Please.”

Reluctantly Seven did and was greeted by the non-face of the Things. She shoved at it with her free hand, not caring about her injury. She had been fooled. Nobody had rescued her, she was still alone. That was why she was chained up. Not to protect the others but to trap her.

Something sharp hit her neck.

\-------------------

“She has made no progress, if anything she has gone backwards. If we continue to keep devoting resources to her, we risk mutiny.”

“And you are suggesting what exactly, Chakotay? Letting her starve? Abandoning her, again? She is one of us and last time I checked we don’t abandon crewmates.”

“Those are not our only options.”

“I won’t hear it. Is that clear?”

“We’re running out of time, Kathryn.”

Seven had managed to wake up without attracting attention. She didn’t have an explanation for why the Things were still imitating voices or from where they even knew them. 

She had a horrible realization, if they were not only able to imitate the voices of the crew but also their speech pattern. They might have taken them prisoners. Or worse. 

She had to get out of here.

Pulling her left hand as slowly as possible towards her she tried to test the restraints strength. But whatever it was connected to hit the ground again. Drawing immediate attention to her waking state.

“Seven, are you awake?” The Thing currently imitating Janeway asked.

She didn’t say anything. No use in responding when they were still pretending to be her crew.

“I know you are awake, Seven.”

“I know you have questions. Don’t you want answers?”

“Not from you.” She stated, wishing she could face away from the thing talking to her.

“I am Kathryn Janeway, your friend.”

“You are someone pretending to be her.”

“I’m not. You think I’m just imitating her voice, right?” Don’t open your eyes and just feel my face.”

The thing took her hand gently and placed it over… hair?

Despite herself, Seven did as she was told and methodically felt her face. It wasn’t a smooth mass but there was hair in eyebrow shape, lids, a nose. She even felt where she had seen the mouth-esque thing with its sharp teeth but there were only lips that had a distinct human feeling to them.

“How did you do that?” She whispered. “How can you imitate her like this?”

“I’m not imitating anybody, Seven,” Janeway stated softly as she put Seven’s hand back from where she’d taken it.

“I’m the real Janeway. Did you get the video message from the doctor? About how something is wrong with your ocular implant?”

“My implant is fine or my nanobots would have informed me of it.”

“Well the thing is. They would do so normally but you took a heavy hit and it triggered something in your system. We’re still not exactly sure what. It seems to have activated a failsafe type of subsystem. Probably meant to only spring into action in life or death scenarios. As far as we can tell its purpose is to rapidly reproduce nanobots to heal you.”

“Why won’t you let them then? I am hurt.”

The Captain sighed and coughed under her breath again. 

“You’re not Borg anymore, Seven. And your human side just doesn’t run on nanobots.” 

“But they could help.” 

Seven could only remember a few instances during which the Captain had sighed this many times in the span of five minutes.

“If you only knew how many times we’ve had this discussion.”

“Captain?”

“Nothing Seven. What I meant is that the quantity of nanobots needed to repair it, would run a high risk of re-assimilating you. Or at the very least purge all of you that has developed since you became part of this crew.”

“You say high-risk. Then it’s not a certainty?”

Another sigh. What had the Captain meant by her previous statement? She couldn’t recall any time they’d talked about this before.

“That was the first thing we tried after the Doctor gave up on repairing your implant. That’s what started this whole mess.”

“I am afraid, Captain, I don’t recall what you mean by this ‘mess’.”

“No of course you don’t. The Doctor put you into an artificial coma to prevent further injury. During monitoring he noticed that your nanoprobe quantity was rapidly increasing. We had the same hope you probably have. That they would know best how to repair Borg Technology. 

“That is a correct assumption.”

“I had some practise.” Janeway laughed lightly, sounding like the woman she knew. At first, that assumption seemed to be correct. Your vital signs increased, from what we could tell your implant was improving too. Soon you were back on your feet and of course demanded to be put back on duty.”

Janeway chuckled in a way that made Seven think that she was recalling that particular conversation. Seven still couldn’t recall anything.

“And I did. Because I wanted to believe so badly that just once things had just… worked themselves out.” The bitterness in her tone stood in stark contrast to the humorous tone she’d had just moments earlier.

Seven couldn’t see her, but her tone suggested she was miles away. Maybe she was imagining herself. Sitting in her ready room, drinking coffee and reading reports.

“For your first day back I paired you with B’elanna. Against her wishes of course. I thought if anyone could handle you without making you feel that you were being given special attention it was her.”

Again, the Captain made an unnecessary long pause before continuing her story.

“From what I gathered, you tried to assimilate her after a heated discussion about the most effective warp core temperature didn’t go your way. You later claimed to me that you did it to help her see your point of view more clearly.”

The conversation between Chakotay and Lt. Paris. ‘She didn’t assimilate your wife’. 

“No. No, I wouldn’t. I couldn’t. I…” Seven didn’t know how to finish that sentence. She wouldn’t under normal circumstances but the way the Captain had described her. Had she?

“If by that you mean, you physically couldn’t have. You’d be correct. You were still too human to turn her into a drone, but the nanoprobes shocked her system. The Doctor is working around the clock to get them all out. He doesn’t think there will be any permanent damage but he can - of course - not be sure.”

Janeway paused. She felt miles away. “It shouldn’t take this long. Even with how limited his equipment is now. Maybe if B’elanna were his only patient...” Her voice was very quiet. Seven wasn’t sure she was even meant to hear that part.

“I am….I am very sorry I did that.” 

“You always are.”

“Captain, you keep saying things that imply we’ve had this conversation before. But I do not remember any part of what you told me. Or in fact anything that I, according to you, did.”

“I’m sorry, Seven. This planet is getting to me I think. This must all be very confusing to you. I’ll try to explain. After your botched assimilation Security managed to sedate and drag you back to sickbay. But not before you took down three of them. One still needs physical therapy. Or whatever we can provide around here.

Janeway made a pause, possibly drank something before continuing. Leaving Seven to contemplate her words in silence.

“The Doctor put you into stasis to halt your nanoprobe regeneration and to buy us some time to discuss what we should do. You have to understand: I was not only dealing with you, and one less chief engineer but also our former negotiation partners. 

“The aliens who wanted to abduct me?”

The captain breathed in loudly. “Yeah. They were perfectly pleasant and cooperative right up until they tried to kidnap you. They really thought I needed the dilithium badly enough to leave you with them as payment.” Her laugh was short and explosive. More akin to a cough attack than anything else.

“But we did need it, desperately in fact. We were almost out, Paris was either at B’elanna’s bedside or trying to get me to throw you out of an airlock. So when I saw a planet that for all intents and purposes looked like an M-Class Planet I jumped. Or rather gave the order to land.”

“Our sensors weren’t working properly before we landed. It was more of a controlled crash than landing if I’m being honest. Only when we ventured outside and the first came back sick we realized that this atmosphere is toxic to us. Not fast-acting. The Doctor thinks we’ll have a few years before we’ll die of this cough. He replicated an anti agent with our last power reserves, which helps but it’s not a long-term solution. Sooner or later we’ll run out.”

“Those are very bleak prospects, Captain. Is delaying death really the only thing we can do?” 

“I know I saw readings of dilithium before the sensors went out. I know it. We just have to survive long enough to find it. We have to.”

Out of respect to the Captain Seven didn’t comment on the likelihood of finding Dilithium with nothing but tricorders. Nor that Janeway sounded less than convinced that she’d actually seen those readings. Instead, she asked the question that had been bugging her since the beginning.

“I still do not understand the purpose of leaving me in an abandoned spaceship.”

“I know the notes we left for you weren’t a repla….”

“What notes?” Seven interrupted her, not wanting to let her get away with raising even more questions before answering at least one.

“The ones we left for you? I think a good third of the crew ended up leaving a note in some way or another. The first time you found us after waking up, you saw us as Monsters. A hallucination caused by your failsafe if we are to believe the Doctor. He thinks it was triggered by us interrupting the multiplying of your nanobots. After we hauled you back the Doctor thought seeing video messages from the crew saying what you meant to them or just sharing personal stories might help you fight it. Clearly hasn’t worked so far.” Janeway ended, voice trailing off. 

“I didn’t get them. Any of them. The Doctor’s message was cut off by the faulty laptop and in the dark…” She couldn’t really believe that the Captain had built her plan on her stumbling over critical messages.

“What do you mean darkness?” For the first time, the Captain sounded genuinely surprised. “You really couldn’t see anything?”

“No Captain.” She stated simply. 

“Shit. Fuck.” There was the sound of a kick and then something hit something solid.

“I told them they were using too much. But did they listen? No. They won’t listen to me. All they see are problems.” It didn’t sound like the Captain was talking to Seven, which increased an uneasy feeling Seven had been developing over the course of their conversation.

“Captain.” She tried to get Janeway’s attention. But the woman was still mumbling. Apparently to herself since she couldn’t really hear anyone else.

“Captain!” Still nothing. “Kathryn Janeway!”. That at least made her stop bumbling.

“Please explain what do you mean by ‘too much’?”

“Oh Seven. A key part of our plan was a serum the Doctor created. It’s supposed to slow your nanobot reproduction rate, since we can’t hinder it completely without risking permanent damage to your health. But it also means that your implant isn’t being repaired if there are too few of them. And that is what happened. Must have. We left a little bit of emergency light on. Nothing much, just to show you the first message and point you towards the flashlight. I told them, dammit.”

The last part, again, seemed to not be directed towards her.

“The doctor gave you another dose after you tried to attack me. It’s why you can’t see anything right now.”

“Will you send me back, Captain?” That was the real question. The one Seven had been dreading to ask. Tightening her fists she willed her to say no. That there was an alternative she had yet to mention they could try now.

“Seven, how did you get here?”

“I asked you a question first, Captain.”

“Yes, Seven I know. Just indulge me, please.

“I… I was here. I was in Voyager and then I was here. You found me.”

Seven couldn’t explain why answering felt like such an effort. Why recalling how she had gotten here left her so confused. She had been in Voyager, right? There had been a biobed and she had woken up in it? Or hadn’t she been in a tent out here? With the others?

“No, we didn’t Seven. You collapsed outside of our camp. You saved yourself. But it doesn’t matter. Yes I’ll send you back, but you won’t remember this conversation. Short term memory loss, another side effect of the failsafe. The worst if you ask me.” Janeway’s voice conveyed exhaustions so palatable. Seven felt like she could reach and touch it as it hung between them. Her brain felt foggy. But this was her captain. She would try for her.

“I know it’s senseless to ask this of you but if you could… Just try, okay? Try harder than you’ve ever done before?” Janeway squeezed her hand. And Seven nodded even though she wasn’t sure exactly what the Captain was referring to.

“They’re getting restless. I’m still their captain but there’s a question in their eyes now. It’s just a matter of time before someone contacts the aliens to trade you for the dilithium they promised. Especially with how Paris has been riling them up.”

Janeway’s voice sounded serious, but Seven didn’t feel serious. She felt tired. And warm. She hadn’t felt warm in a while. She wasn’t alone anymore. She was safe.

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, listen. Thank you for reading it means a lot to me. I had an absolute blast writing this.  
> Not only did I have a whole discord server motivating me but also had the great luck of working with my beta Bella on this fic. Not only did she make this fic a thousand times better than it would have been otherwise, but also put up with my non-existent knowledge of punctuation or the difference between then and than. She also worked tirelessly to point out all the plotholes and inconsistencies that tried to make their way into this. The biggest thank you to her!!!
> 
> I also want to thank my wonderful artist Alex @pyrrhic-victory1 for creating the wonderful (and slightly horrifying art (in the best way)) you can see just above this note. I was already excited when I saw his previous works but this really exceeded my expectations and I feel very honored that he has taken the time to create this for me and us.
> 
> Also one final thank you to our Mod Cy for organising the whole thing, it really was my favorite Bang-Event!
> 
> Once again, I'm grateful to you for taking the time to read this and if you want to comment it will mean the world to me.  
> Find me on Tumblr @nta-main


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